Intro: I'm an avid explorer of Cedar Mesa and the Needles District of Canyonlands NP who moved to SE Utah back in 1997. I hike the canyon country from September thru May and in the mountains in summer. I used to hike with my two dogs Dusty & Browny, who I stopped taking for long hikes about 2008. Browny died at 14 in 2009, while Dusty died at 16 in 2010. Squeaky, born about a week before Halloween, in 2008, hikes with me as often as I let her.
This website chronicles the many Anasazi places I've been to as well as a few photos of artifacts I choose to include online. There's also a NEWS page in which I mention a few details about where I hike, the weather, who if anyone I see, etc, but I usually don't mention place names where I explore. There are hundreds of photos in this site and the lower-numbered pages have my earlier, smaller, and not-quite-as-good photos but I'm eventually upgrading them all (returning with a better camera). I've written two books so far and just below are some blurbs about them.
The second edition of Sandstone Way is minus the hiking guidebook which is available as a separate volume, called Cedar Mesa Hikes. Sandstone Way is a collection of "reflections" or allegorical essays about the lifeways of the Anasazi as seen thru my eyes and imagination.
My publisher is virtualbookworm.com publishing and if you order these books from their bookstore, I get a higher royalty that if you buy from any bookstore or website such as Amazon; go to their bookstore, select for softback books, then hiking books and scroll down to my books.
CEDAR MESA HIKES
OUT OF PRINT
Cedar Mesa Hikes is out of print as of August 31, 2010. I added an "Errata" page online for mistakes or changes I will make in a newer guidebook, which I will likely publish in 2012. This new book will include the Cedar Mesa material plus more, the Needles, both SE UT mountain ranges, Natural Bridges NM, the San Juan River corridor, Arches NP, Elk Ridge and Dark C, Indian Creek, and a bit about Moab area hikes. For anybody thinking of purchasing this book you might want to wait for the new one: Southeast Utah Hikes, by yours truly.
Here's the front cover for my first book, Sandstone Way (second edition). The content now is other writings about my imaginary discoveries, thoughts, and might be labeled 'reflective' (if you must have a label).
My copyright policy is: basically, all photos included in this website are copyrighted. However, you may use any photo(s) as long as you give me credit and do not print them to paper to be included in any printed media, such as a book, magazine, journal, etc. Online media, such as websites, may incorporate my photos but you must credit me for any photo(s) used. Realize, though, that I deliberately optimize my photos for the internet thus the printable quality is fairly low.
The photos: The lower-numbered photos, in all the lower-numbered pages (in the navigation links I separate pages by smaller or larger photos), were taken with a Sony digital camera with less than one Megapixel and no polarizer filter. Thus they are usually overexposed, smaller, of lower quality, and smaller file sizes. A few years ago I purchased a Canon Rebel EOS (digital SLR) and soon got a polarizer filter and telephoto lens. Earlier the largest sized photo I included in this website was about 640 by 480 pixels and they were all optimized down to about 100Kb or so. With my Canon camera I began to increase the photos up to 900 by 600 pixels and started including a few 1Mb photos online.
In early 2007, I got a Canon Powershot 7Mp camera with Image Stabilization, and even though it has no polarizer filter I'm obtaining very nice photo files with it. I began making my photos 1000 by 750 pixels (vice versa for portrait layout) and increasing the size of all thumbnails. As I return to places I re-do my photos and upload them into this website, replacing earlier and smaller photos. I'm also increasing the average online file sizes to the 300+Kb range on all new photos. I realize this will slow download speeds for those (like myself) with dial-up connections, but it will help the online quality of the photos so should be worth the wait; people with broadband obviously won't have an issue downloading them. As is obvious I'm not a professional photographer though I had a little training long ago. Early in 2010 I bought a Canon Powershot 12Mp camera with Image Stabilization to replace my earlier Powershot.
The frame containing the navigation bar (links) below the pages is collapsible to allow more vertical space to view photos.
contact hikemaster:
info@anasazis.com
I no longer use this email address much, but I'll reply eventually.